Tag: coronavirus
Heighten the Mystery
With California burning, Antarctica melting, and a death-toll spiraling, we’re left with a looming question: Can a people walking in darkness yet be made to see?
“Following the Science” in a Polarized Age
We should “follow the science.” But we need to have the intellectual humility—and moral fortitude—to acknowledge the provisional, incremental nature of scientific understanding.
Lives at Stake: Education in the Academic Year 2020-2021
Students may return to universities that post a philosophy statement but have no philosophy department. Yet as we look at our country, divided over history and by economics, home to scientific innovation and scientific ignorance, education is both more needed and more endangered than ever.
Looking Back to Oscar Charleston and Forward to a Strange Baseball...
Before I begin to complain about the shortened season, the lack of travel to the usual hubs, the lack of live fanhood, it might be well to remember those who loved baseball with extraordinary intensity, yet for whom no season of major league baseball ever opened up its bounty.
Brass Spittoon: Wall Street vs. Main Street, 2020
Chris Arnade, Jared Woodard, and Sarah Hamersma on Wall Street versus Main Street.
The Domestic Arts: Finding a Quiet Dignity in the Mundane
As Sarah Orne Jewett knew, "everyday tasks” and the celebrations they engender are the condition upon which many other arts rest, including poetry.
The Danger of Hope: Lana Del Rey, Stephen King, and Wendell...
Lana Del Rey. Wendell Berry. Stephen King. Singer-songwriter. Poet-novelist-essayist farmer. Horror writer. What brings these three seemingly disparate artists together in my imagination? Hope.
The Old Normal is Alive and Well in Paris
No man is an island, and everything we do, even in the privacy of our homes, has an effect on our society as a whole, but the past three months have shown us that the same lie that animates the Chinese government has spread and infected the West as well: the State knows best.
Thinking about the Post-Pandemic (and, Maybe, the Post-Suburban) Neighborhood
Chuck Marohn's work, whatever disagreements one may have with it, gives us some good counsel on where to start changing suburban-addicted minds and fiscal incentives.
Failing in a Pandemic
The whole mode of online education screams that now I must be the source of attraction. But I’m not entertaining. In fact, I’m pretty unentertaining. If you ask most of my students, they may even say I’m boring.